Java Jukebox

By Luke Miller

- 4 minute read - 720 words

I was curious to see if I could write a music-shuffling program in Java, so that I could listen to tracks stored on an external hard drive. I had digitised an old vinyl collection, most of which can’t be found on YouTube!

The program is simple: it finds all the tracks from a given directory and its subdirectories, and plays them in a random order. If your music is organised into categories or artists, then you can target a particular genre by passing in the appropriate directory as the first argument.

There is a skipping functionality to move onto the next track if you’re not in the mood for a particular song - it is a little finicky, though, possibly because it runs on a separate thread.

Note: audio files are expected to be in the .mp3 format, else they are omitted from the playlist.

Installation

Code

These instructions are meant for Ubuntu OS and may need tweaking for other systems.

To run this, you will need to install a java compiler, e.g. with:

s s s j u u u a d d d v o o o a c a a a p p p t t t v e u i i r p n n s d s s i a t t o t a a n e l l l l d d e e f f a a u u l l t t - - j j r d e k

Additionally, you will need a music player. The Jukebox is hard-coded to use mpg123 player, which you can install on Ubuntu with:

s u d o a p t i n s t a l l m p g 1 2 3

Run it

You can compile the program from the root directory with:

j a v a c J u k e b o x . j a v a

Then run it:

$ N L N L N L E o o o o o o n j w c w c w c d a a a a v p t p t p t o a l i l i l i f a o a o a o J y n y n y n p u i i i l k n n n a e g g g y b : : : : : : l o i x 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~ s 1 / 4 / 1 / t ~ M M M . / - u - u - u M s s s u M i G i W i s i c i c e c i a / v / / c m w i w A w / i o n o r o r g r e r 8 k k k 2 o I o L o u t u o u ( t t v t f _ A _ e _ e m l m m a u l u u t s s s . i ( i i c F c c M / r / / a 0 i 0 0 d 1 e 4 1 a n m - d - - e M W G W B i i i e u a t v t m h i A t i i n r o n g e n 8 s 2 R I L ) e t o ( m v ( f i A e V e x l . o a ) l m c t p a . ( 3 l F M r R a i a d e d a n i m d o e W E B i d u t i t h t t i ) o n n s R ) e m ( i V x o ) c . a m l p 3 R a d i o E d i t ) . m p 3

There is skipping capability (runs on a separate thread), which you can use to jump to the next track: just tap “s” followed by Enter.

If you like this project, please hit the ⭐ button on the GitHub page!

Updated: 30. August 2022